French communications giant Alcatel-Lucent's charitable arm - Alcatel-Lucent Foundation - has contributed a US$90,000 grant to support an initiative by Malaysian non-profit social enterprise eHomeworkers. The objective is to train up to 30 disadvantaged and physically challenged women in Malaysia to operate a cyber-telecentre.

Alcatel-Lucent Malaysia president and managing director Mohd Fazlin Shah Mohd Salleh said on 2 Novemberthat the new cyber-telecentre will bring e-work to urban and rural areas as well as harvest an untapped pool of talent. The 30 women are expected to benefit from the project by the end of 2012 from the grant by Alcatel-Lucent's charitable arm - Alcatel-Lucent Academy.

"Two years ago, we trained many women to use computers but very few of them managed to get jobs because not many employers wanted to hire them due to lack of work skills," said eHomemakers executive director, Chong Sheau Ching. "The innovative data entry scheme that we are creating will allow them to work at home at their respective skill level."

Chong said the participating women, from Klang Valley, Terengganu and Sarawak, are receiving data entry training and would help to digitise business cards. "At the end of their training period, the women, most of whom have never worked before, will earn money from the data entry work."

"eHomemakers has been training disadvantaged women in computer work for more than eight years so that they can work at home or seek flexi work with employers," she said. "Computer-based work gives women a chance to grow into higher value paid-work instead of participating in gender stereotyped income-earning schemes such as cooking and sewing. This is the first time eHomemakers forms a cyber-telecentre to group the women together so that they can complement each other's time and skills to take on a bigger volume of e-work, and enabling them to balance work and home life at the same time."

"We are certainly proud to be associated with eHomemakers and the project it brings," said Alcatel-Lucent's Mohd Fazlin. "We are confident the financial support from the Alcatel-Lucent Foundation will tremendously help eHomemakers to achieve part of its social mission of helping people, especially disadvantaged women, to work at home for economic self-reliance and work-life balance."

Non-profit social enterprise eHomemakers consists of an e-community of 17,000 teleworkers, SOHO owners, homemakers and home workers (see www.ehomemakers.net) and also a pro-poor project community.